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Robert Nixon | |
---|---|
Born | Robert Henry Nixon 1954 (age 69–70) |
Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) | Film director, writer, conservationist |
Years active | 1978–present |
Board member of | Earth Conservation Corps The Pearl Foundation Wings Over America |
Spouse | Sarah Thorsby Guinan |
Children | 3 |
Parent(s) | Robert Nixon Agnes Nixon |
Awards | Academy Award nominee National Geographic Hero of the Planet President's Service Award (Clinton Administration) [1] [2] |
Robert Henry Nixon (born 1954) is an American film director, writer and conservationist. His films, often focused on the battles of tribal peoples and field biologists, include Amazon Diary, America The Beautiful, The End of the Game, Fossey's War, Gorillas in the Mist , Endangered Species, The Last Rivermen, American Heroes, Mission Blue, Great White Highway, The Lord God Bird, Peter Beard's Africa: Last Word From Paradise, The Flight Of Double Eagle II, So Long Lady and The Falconer. [3] [4]
Nixon was born in 1954. His father, Robert, was an executive with Chrysler; his mother, Agnes Nixon, the creator of One Life to Live and All My Children , is regarded as a pioneer in bringing social consciousness to daytime television. [5]
Raised in a Philadelphia suburb, Nixon aspired to be a field biologist but academic challenges at Episcopal Academy led him to England, where he was an apprentice falconer to Master Falconer Phillip Glasier. He subsequently searched the rainforest of Guyana to study and photograph the little-known ornate hawk eagle and the harpy eagle.[ citation needed ]
Returning to America, Nixon established a Raptor education program at The Wildlife Preserve under the guidance of master falconer Jim Fowler, the co-host of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom . [4] [6]
Often hired to "fly" raptors for feature films and television commercials, Nixon began his career in film as a professional falconer in the mid-70s. In 1976, he began producing adventure and environmental documentaries for ABC's American Sportsman series. [7] [8] In 1979, Nixon led a film crew to Rwanda to produce a documentary about famed zoologist Dian Fossey. Nixon pressed Fossey to allow him to make a dramatic film about her life; she agreed to grant him the rights to her story, for free, provided that he spend a year dedicated to hands-on conservation. Film studios became interested in Fossey's life after she was murdered in 1985, [9] and her story was told in the feature film, Gorillas in the Mist, which Nixon co-produced. [10] The film, which starred Sigourney Weaver, was a critical and commercial success. [11] [12] Nixon next wrote, produced and directed the dramatic film Amazon Diary, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 1990. [13] Shot in the Amazon, the film examined the story of the Kayapo Indians, their relationship with the harpy eagle and their battle to protect the rain forest.
Nixon's subsequent films continued to focus on themes related to conservation, ecology, and environmental activism, and included the 1990 documentary, America the Beautiful, which was hosted by Curt Gowdy and featured President George H. W. Bush. [14] In 2014, Nixon produced and directed Mission Blue, a biographical portrait of renowned oceanographer and eco-activist Sylvia Earle. The film's premiere served as the opening of the 2014 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. [15] [16]
Nixon's film Amazon Diary was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012. [17]
In the early 1990s, after he read a New York Times article about the garbage-choked Anacostia River, which runs through one of America's poorest neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., Nixon decided that engaging local unemployed youth to restore their river would be his environmental year in honor of Fossey. [18] [19] Nixon moved from Malibu, California to Washington, D.C., and secured a $50,000 grant from the Coors Foundation to launch the Earth Conservation Corps, a stalled domestic policy initiative which Nixon had discussed with President George G.W. Bush during the production of America the Beautiful. He persuaded seven teenage boys and two teenage girls to volunteer to clean up the river, and together they hauled thousands of tires from the water; the program later expanded to include replanting wetlands, restoring river habitats, and creating parks and trails. [20]
Since its launch, corps member have provided more than one million hours of service, mobilizing thousands of young people and fostering the involvement of the city and Federal government. Earth Conservation Corps has additionally established several environmental groups on the Anacostia River, including the Anacostia RiverKeeper, the Living Classroom Foundation, and the Pearl Coalition, an educational project centered on the Pearl, a schooner chartered for the largest recorded slave escape attempt in American history. [21] [22] [23] Considered a model for minority engagement in environmental service, Earth Conservation Corps members volunteer 1700 hours restoring the Anacostia River and in return receive a nominal bi-weekly stipend and a college scholarship through the federal AmeriCorps program. [4] [24] Nixon, who originally intended to spend only a year on the project, has remained the group's leader for more than 20 years. "I came here because I thought, you know, point out the problem, and the cavalry would arrive and I'd go back to making feature films," he told CBS News correspondent Ed Bradley. "I'm still waiting for the cavalry, you know?" [25]
Inspired by the impact of the Earth Conservation Corps, Nixon founded Wings Over America, a non-profit which pairs adjudicated youth with injured birds of prey as part of the rehabilitation process. His work as a conservationist and activist has generated significant media attention, and has been covered by 60 Minutes , Now with Bill Moyers , PBS and NPR, among many other broadcast outlets. Nixon has been featured in publications including Time, The Washington Post , The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.. [26]
Nixon and his wife, Sarah Thorsby Guinan, live in Washington, D.C., and Martha's Vineyard, where they own The Menemsha Inn and Cottages, the Beach Plum Inn and Restaurant, and the Home Port Restaurant. [27]
After seeing a story about injured veterans in Afghanistan, their son, Jack, helped to conceive and organize the American Heroes Fishing Challenge. The challenge, which brings severely wounded active duty military from Walter Reed and Fort Belvoir military hospitals to New England to compete with 3,000 others in the Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby, was the subject of a documentary Nixon and Guinan Nixon produced and directed. [28] [29]
Year | Title | Credit | Medium |
---|---|---|---|
2016 | "Blue Serengeti" / "Shark Week" | Director, Producer, Writer | Television documentary (episode) |
2014 | Mission Blue | Director, producer | Feature documentary |
2013 | American Heroes Saltwater Challenge | Director, producer | Television documentary |
2012 | Great White Highway/Shark Week | Director, producer | Television documentary (episode) |
2007 | The Lord God Bird | Producer | Feature documentary |
2004 | Endangered Species | Director, producer | Feature documentary |
1991 | The Last Riverman | Director, producer | Feature documentary |
1990 | America the Beautiful | Director, producer | Television documentary |
1989 | Amazon Diary | Director, producer | Live action short film |
1988 | Gorillas in the Mist | Co-producer | Feature film |
1988 | Sea Turtles: Ancient Nomads | Director, producer | Television documentary |
1988 | Elephant Diary | Director | Live Action Short Film |
1988 | With Peter Beard in Africa: Last Word from Paradise | Director | Documentary |
1987 | If I Can Do This... I Can Do Anything | Director | Documentary |
1982 | On the Trail of the Giant Panda | Director | Documentary |
1980 | Fossey's War | Director | Documentary short subject |
1980 | Japanese Long Line Tuna Fishing | Producer | Television documentary |
1978 | So Long Lady | Writer | Television documentary |
Susan Alexandra "Sigourney" Weaver is an American actress. A figure in science fiction and popular culture, she has received various accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Grammy Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Awards, four Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award. In 2003, she was voted Number 20 in Channel 4's countdown of the 100 greatest movie stars of all time.
Dian Fossey was an American primatologist and conservationist known for undertaking an extensive study of mountain gorilla groups from 1966 until her murder in 1985. She studied them daily in the mountain forests of Rwanda, initially encouraged to work there by paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. Gorillas in the Mist, a book published two years before her death, is Fossey's account of her scientific study of the gorillas at Karisoke Research Center and prior career. It was adapted into a 1988 film of the same name.
The mountain gorilla is one of the two subspecies of the eastern gorilla. It is listed as endangered by the IUCN as of 2018.
The Anacostia River is a river in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States. It flows from Prince George's County in Maryland into Washington, D.C., where it joins with the Washington Channel and ultimately empties into the Potomac River at Buzzard Point. It is about 8.7 miles (14.0 km) long. The name "Anacostia" derives from the area's early history as Nacotchtank, a settlement of Necostan or Anacostan Native Americans on the banks of the Anacostia River.
Volcanoes National Park is a national park in northwestern Rwanda. It covers 160 km2 (62 sq mi) of rainforest and encompasses five of the eight volcanoes in the Virunga Mountains, namely Karisimbi, Bisoke, Muhabura, Gahinga and Sabyinyo. It borders Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in Uganda. It is home to the mountain gorilla and the golden monkey, and was the base for the primatologist Dian Fossey.
The eastern gorilla is a critically endangered species of the genus Gorilla and the largest living primate. At present, the species is subdivided into two subspecies. There are 6,800 eastern lowland gorillas or Grauer's gorillas and 1,000 mountain gorillas. Illegal hunting threatens the species.
Gorillas in the Mist is a 1988 American biographical drama film directed by Michael Apted from a screenplay by Anna Hamilton Phelan and a story by Phelan and Tab Murphy. The film is based on the work by Dian Fossey and the article by Harold T. P. Hayes. It stars Sigourney Weaver as naturalist Dian Fossey and Bryan Brown as photographer Bob Campbell. It tells the story of Fossey, who came to Africa to study the vanishing mountain gorillas, and later fought to protect them.
The Indianapolis Prize is a biennial prize awarded by the Indianapolis Zoo to individuals for "extraordinary contributions to conservation efforts" affecting one or more animal species.
The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International is a charity for the protection of endangered mountain gorillas. The Digit Fund was created by Dr. Dian Fossey in 1978 for the sole purpose of financing her anti-poaching patrols and preventing further poaching of the mountain gorillas. Fossey studied at her Karisoke Research Center in the Virunga Volcanoes of Rwanda. The non-profit fund was named in memory of Fossey's favourite gorilla, Digit, who was decapitated by poachers for the offer of US$20 by a Hutu merchant who specialized in selling gorilla heads as trophies and gorilla hands as ashtrays to tourists.
Kingman Island and Heritage Island are islands in Northeast and Southeast Washington, D.C., in the Anacostia River. Both islands are man-made, built from material dredged from the Anacostia River and completed in 1916. Kingman Island is bordered on the east by the Anacostia River, and on the west by 110-acre (45 ha) Kingman Lake. Heritage Island is surrounded by Kingman Lake. Both islands were federally owned property managed by the National Park Service until 1995. They are currently owned by the D.C. government, and managed by Living Classrooms National Capital Region. Kingman Island is bisected by Benning Road and the Ethel Kennedy Bridge, with the southern half of the island bisected again by East Capitol Street and the Whitney Young Memorial Bridge. As of 2010, Langston Golf Course occupied the northern half of Kingman Island, while the southern half of Kingman Island and all of Heritage Island remained largely undeveloped. Kingman Island, Kingman Lake and nearby Kingman Park are named after Brigadier General Dan Christie Kingman, the former head of the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
Kingman Lake is a 110-acre (0.45 km2) artificial lake located in the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C., in the United States. The lake was created in 1920 when the United States Army Corps of Engineers used material dredged from the Anacostia River to create Kingman Island. The Corps of Engineers largely blocked the flow of the Anacostia River to the west of Kingman Island, creating the lake. Kingman Lake is currently managed by the National Park Service.
Greenway is a residential neighborhood in Southeast Washington, D.C., in the United States. The neighborhood is bounded by East Capitol Street to the north, Pennsylvania Avenue SE to the south, Interstate 295 to the west, and Minnesota Avenue to the east.
Eugène Rutagarama is an environmentalist from Rwanda. He was awarded the "Goldman Environmental Prize" in 2001, for his efforts on saving the population of mountain gorillas in the Volcanoes National Park at Virungas mountains, during the war and recent conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Amy Vedder is an ecologist and primatologist involved in conservation work with mountain gorillas.
The D.A.R. State Forest is a publicly owned forest with recreational features located mostly in the town of Goshen with some spillage into neighboring Ashfield, Massachusetts. Activities center around Upper and Lower Highland Lakes. The state forest encompasses 1,728 acres (699 ha) and is managed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
Willard Brook State Forest is a publicly owned forest with recreational features located in the towns of Ashby and Townsend, Massachusetts. The forest's fast-running brook and tree stands of a classic New England nature give it a character more in line with that of the forests found farther west in the state. It is managed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
Otter River State Forest is a publicly owned forest and recreational preserve located in the towns of Templeton, Winchendon, and Royalston in Massachusetts managed by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. The state forest encompasses the land surrounding the junction of the Otter and Millers rivers. Habitats include freshwater marsh, northern hardwood stands, and pine groves planted by the Civilian Conservation Corps to reforest former farmlands.
Ian Michael Redmond OBE FZS FLS is a tropical field biologist and conservationist. Renowned for his work with mountain gorillas and elephants, Redmond has been involved in more than 50 documentaries on the subject for, among others, the BBC, National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. Redmond was also involved in the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist, spending some time with Sigourney Weaver so she could better understand her character.
The African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) is an international conservation organization dedicated to the preservation of Africa's wildlife and wild lands. AWF aims to protect the continent's wild lands as well as its wildlife and natural resources.
Woman in the Mists: The Story of Dian Fossey and the Mountain Gorillas of Africa is a 1987 biography of the conservationist Dian Fossey, who studied and lived among the mountain gorillas of Rwanda. It is written by the Canadian author Farley Mowat, himself a conservationist and author of the book Never Cry Wolf.
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